Archery Summit

Archery Summit makes some of the highest rated,
best known wines in Oregon. Founder Gary Andrus introduced a style of Pinot noir that Oregon had not seen before. His wines were big, juicy, lush and round - a style customers loved. When he left the winery in 2000,
a new winemaker and
management team stepped in.
Anna Matzinger continued the Archery tradition and added her own mark on the wines. She was winemaker for twelve years, departing in March 2013.

Archery Summit has perhaps
achieved more nationwide fame and respect than any other Oregon winery.
That's been due in no small part to the high scores and publicity
their wines have achieved in recent years. But it's also been partly
due to the high-profile image of their founder,
Gary Andrus. Gary passed away in 2009 (he left the winery in 2000 to found his own Gypsy Dancer) but his flamboyant style echoes down the rows of barrels in the Archery cellars.

Gary's flair
for both marketing and winemaking (he released the first widely distributed
$100 bottling of Oregon pinot noir) attracted lots of attention for
Archery Summit. Gary's real
genius at Archery Summit was putting his knowledge into the vineyards.
Gary did it right.
He made the right selection of the newer clones and the right selection
of the spacing in the late 1990's and the winery has reaped the benefits. In addition to the highly regarded Estate vineyard, Archery draws fruit from Arcus, Renegade Ridge, Loony, and Red Hills Vineyards. Their stack of high scores across many vintages is remarkable.

New winemaker and General Manager Chris Mazepink comes to Archery Summit from Benton Lane by way of Lemelson and Shea Wine Cellars. Assistant winemaker under Shea Wine Cellars winemaker Sam Tannahill, who was mentored by Gary Andrus at Archery, a full circle was formed when Chris joined Archery. He learned the traditional Archery style from Gary by way of Sam, and will echo the original wine style in his own.

Originally featured by Avalon in August 2010, Forefront Pinot noir com...

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$17.95

$19.95 Regular

More About Archery Summit Winery

A Focus on Quality

Maintaining the quality of Archery Summit's wines has been a concern
to everybody-including the financial owners of Archery Summit and Pine
Ridge, the two wineries Gary and his then-wife Nancy Andrus founded.

The financial partners and the California headquarters have been involved
since the very beginning of the winery, and they've always been very back seat partners-they
didn't want to be seen as a corporate-type winery. The one thing that they
made really clear to the winemaker from the start was not
to ever do anything to sacrifice the quality of the wines that are
coming out of the winery

"We have a good system here," says Anna
Matzinger, Archery Summit'ssformer winemaker, "it's pretty
dreamy, actually!" She should know, after all, her experience of
winery work extends around the globe.

Anna began her winemaking
career working as a lab technician for Beringer Vineyards in Napa
Valley, California. Her experience also includes harvests and winemaking
in Marlborough, New Zealand, Margaret River and Hunter Valley, Australia
and Dry Creek, California. She joined Archery Summit in 1999, becoming
Assistant Winemaker the next year-and two years later she became Winemaker, departing in 2013.

"Anna has a great passion
for the wines of Archery Summit," says Sean Carlton, Archery Summit's
former general manager. "When it became time to hire a new winemaker we
did a pretty extensive search. We looked into Burgundy, we looked
into California, but we decided that the uniqueness of Oregon really
meant the next winemaker at Archery Summit had to come from Oregon.
We soon realized that the core of Archery Summit was our 80 different
vineyard blocks of Pinot noir in our four estate vineyards, and that
no one knew better how they all worked in our program than Anna.
The best winemaker for Archery Summit was already here!"

A quietly confident woman
who seems to prefer letting her wines speak for themselves, Anna
nevertheless admits to a "low level of anxiety" about her new position.
She is conscious of being in the public eye, following two highly
respected predecessors at one of the most prestigious wineries in
the Pacific Northwest. "It is good to have been part of all this
for the past few years," she says of her experience at Archery Summit, "and
to have seen the evolution and understand the importance of the history."

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and its AVALON brand are not in any way affiliated with Avalon Wine, Inc, an Oregon corporation,
or Avalon Wine's store at its physical location in Oregon.

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